Take A Picture
So I'm out at a club in the fine city of Montreal, pretty much minding my own business, when a woman comes up and asks if I'd take a picture of her underwear. Now when your business is night photography, you aren't just sitting around doing nothing. I was bopping around the club making pictures. I had my camera in hand. I'd been shooting for hours by the time this request came. I wasn't just another Joe with a camera phone. I'd been singled out. It happens.
Two seconds later she lifts her shirt and turns her back to me so I can snap the picture. The text of her underwear was not immediately legible through my lens but once I was done with the shot I see it says, "Take a picture, it lasts longer!" A whole mess of ill-formed questions come into my head. What is it about photography that so titillates the perverted mind? Why is the primary medium of my artistic expression so strangely acknowledged on a pair of panties? What the heck is that supposed to mean given that context? At what point should I stop wondering about these things and simply chalk it up as the way things are?
I think it's time for a rereading of Susan Sontag's On Photography. Maybe that little slogan, which no one should rightfully be seeing unless, as in my case, it's hoisted in front of you, is simply a pithy version of what Sontag was getting at when she wrote, "To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt." I think that's dead on but lacks some of the implied sexual overtones. It's something to ponder for sure.
On a more ridiculous note, the glass of champagne in her hand cost a whopping $25.00. My services were free.
Take pictures, think about it.
Two seconds later she lifts her shirt and turns her back to me so I can snap the picture. The text of her underwear was not immediately legible through my lens but once I was done with the shot I see it says, "Take a picture, it lasts longer!" A whole mess of ill-formed questions come into my head. What is it about photography that so titillates the perverted mind? Why is the primary medium of my artistic expression so strangely acknowledged on a pair of panties? What the heck is that supposed to mean given that context? At what point should I stop wondering about these things and simply chalk it up as the way things are?
I think it's time for a rereading of Susan Sontag's On Photography. Maybe that little slogan, which no one should rightfully be seeing unless, as in my case, it's hoisted in front of you, is simply a pithy version of what Sontag was getting at when she wrote, "To take a photograph is to participate in another person's mortality, vulnerability, mutability. Precisely by slicing out this moment and freezing it, all photographs testify to time's relentless melt." I think that's dead on but lacks some of the implied sexual overtones. It's something to ponder for sure.
On a more ridiculous note, the glass of champagne in her hand cost a whopping $25.00. My services were free.
Take pictures, think about it.
6 comments:
Hmm.
I have ones that say "All You Can Eat" on the back. Would you take a picture of those, too? :p
i LOVE your job!!
From my next door to my idol.
I hoist one for you.
Ode'
i had trouble with this picture. whenever you are at a bar with a decent camera system there will be some girl who flashes her tits, or humps the pooltable, or whatever... the underwear with the sign on it just shows this girl was screwy enough to have decided to do this when she was sober enough to buy a pair of panties.
i understand the thought train the picture took you on though. and i am glad you wrote about it because i thought it was one of your weaker shots until you brought me somewhere with it.
do you drink with these idiots when you are taking these shots? do you know these people's names?
-matt
http://chimera.13th-floor.org
in this case i had a drink or two. i rarely get drunk.
as for names, i could have gotten this woman's name but I didn't. i may have given her my card so she could contact me later. i always offer to give them free high-res copies of my photos but few ever take me up on the deal.
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